The Application of PVDF-Based Piezoelectric Patches in Energy Harvesting from Tire Deformation

Abstract

The application of Polyvinylidene Fluoride or Polyvinylidene Difluoride (PVDF) in harvesting energy from tire deformation was investigated in this study. An instrumented tire with different sizes of PVDF-based piezoelectric patches and a tri-axial accelerometer attached to its inner liner was used for this purpose and was tested under different conditions on asphalt and concrete surfaces. The results demonstrated that on both pavement types, the generated voltage was directly proportional to the size of the harvester patches, the longitudinal velocity, and the normal load. Additionally, the generated voltage was inversely proportional to the tire inflation pressure. Moreover, the range of generated voltages was slightly higher on asphalt compared to the same testing conditions on the concrete surface. Based on the results, it was concluded that in addition to the potential role of the PVDF-based piezoelectric film in harvesting energy from tire deformation, they demonstrate great potential to be used as self-powered sensors to estimate the tire-road contact parameters.

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“…Polymers have the advantage of being flexible and the most studied piezoelectric polymers belong to the PVDF family because of their significant piezoelectricity effects. To date, energy harvesting has been demonstrated from different kinds of mechanical energy sources including but not limited to sound, wind blowing, rain drop, and tire rolling [182][183][184][185][186][187][188]. Initiative is also taken to harvest energy from various body motions, such as finger motion, hand motion, footstep, shoulder motions, breathing, etc [189][190][191][192][193][194].…”

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“…However, these assemblies [24] are often complex, rigid, and PZT is brittle and subject to wearing. PVDF is a piezoelectric polymer that has lower performance than PZT but allows for flexibility and larger deformations for tire application [25][26] [27]. Triboelectric harvesters [28] are also under development within UC5.…”

Simulated and measured piezoelectric energy harvesting of dynamic load in tires

“…Another piezoelectric-based material is poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) that is flexible, enables large deformation making it also good candidate for tire applications. even it has lower piezoelectric constant than ceramic PZT [ [19] , [20] , [21] ]. Lee and Choi [ 22 ] used PVDF film obtaining 380 μJ per revolution at 60 km/h and 500 kg load, converting and using approximately 9.7% of the available energy.…”